70 billion solar neutrinos pass through your thumbnail, undetected, every second.
forbes.com
forbes.com
Based on electron-neutrino scattering, nuclear reactions occur only in the Sunโs innermost 20-25%.
Astronomers have very few tools to peer into the heart of the Sun. Thankfully, the nuclear reactions constantly happening in the core of the Sun as it fuses hydrogen into helium release a non-stop flood of neutrinos.
Theoretical physicists still know remarkably little about neutrinos, despite the fact that they have been aware of their existence for nearly a century.
Neutrinos come in three โflavorsโ: electron, muon and tau. But these identities arenโt fixed.
โIf a neutrino is born as a certain flavor, as it travels, it can morph into other flavors.โ
โIf a neutrino is born as a certain flavor, as it travels, it can morph into other flavors.โ
Part of what makes studying neutrinos so complicated is they come from compact objects (the inside of a star) and then interact with one another.
When different flavors are emitted in different directions deep within a star, conversions occur rapidly and are called โfast conversions.โ
Approximately 99% of the helium produced on Earth is the result of the alpha decay of underground deposits of minerals containing uranium or thorium.
Radiation is energy. It can come from unstable atoms that undergo radioactive decay, or it can be produced by machines.
Non-ionizing radiation has enough energy to move atoms in a molecule around or cause them to vibrate, but not enough to remove electrons from atoms.
Ionizing radiation has so much energy it can knock electrons out of atoms, a process known as ionization.
Unlike alpha (ฮฑ) and beta (ฮฒ) particles, which have both energy and mass, gamma rays are pure energy. Gamma rays are similar to visible light, but have much higher energy.
X-rays are emitted from processes outside the nucleus, but gamma rays originate inside the nucleus. They also are generally lower in energy and, therefore less penetrating than gamma rays.
While the particle pairs quickly vanish into nothingness again, their existence leaves behind a certain amount of energy.
โThis vacuum energy also has a meaning in general relativity.โ
scitechdaily.com
โThis vacuum energy also has a meaning in general relativity.โ
scitechdaily.com
Particle decays regularly produce mid-to-low-energy neutrinos, the kind that physicists spend the bulk of their time observing. But every once and a while a different kind of neutrino is detected โ a high-energy cosmic neutrino.
symmetrymagazine.org
symmetrymagazine.org
Due to the vastness of space and the ubiquity of view-blocking dust clouds, most of the universe is hidden from photon-based telescopes. Instead, astronomers look for messenger particles, such as neutrinos, to learn more about these dark regions.
In 2018, the IceCube observatory was the first to pinpoint a source of high-energy neutrinos: a blazar 3.7 billion light years away.
A blazar is the nucleus of a galaxy powered by a black hole that can accelerate particles in huge jets at nearly the speed of light.
A blazar is the nucleus of a galaxy powered by a black hole that can accelerate particles in huge jets at nearly the speed of light.
The Dark Energy Survey observes photons of light at visible wavelengths; the South Pole Telescope looks at light at microwave wavelengths.
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
The use of a beam of neutrinos to investigate the structure of protons was once thought impossible.
yfile.news.yorku.ca
yfile.news.yorku.ca
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